Anton Chekhov wrote this story in 1889, and the farthest back the inflation calculator would let me go was 1914.
So, if this story took place in 1915, the young man bet fifteen years of his life to win an amount of money that would be over 47 million dollars today.
Two million just doesn't sound like much - but 47 million dollars!
Would you give up fifteen years of your life, living in jail, for 47 million dollars at the end of that time? Ever after fifteen more years of inflation, I'd say that would be quite a chunk of change!
Look back at Part One if you missed this part - and now, they set the terms of the contract...
***
The Bet - Part Two
By Anton Chekhov
It was decided that the young man should spend the years of his
captivity under the strictest supervision in one of the lodges in the banker's
garden. It was agreed that for fifteen years he should not be free to cross the
threshold of the lodge, to see human beings, to hear the human voice, or to
receive letters and newspapers.
He was allowed to have a musical instrument and books, and was
allowed to write letters, to drink wine, and to smoke.
By the terms of the agreement, the only relations he could have
with the outer world were by a little window made purposely for that object. He
might have anything he wanted -- books, music, wine, and so on -- in any
quantity he desired by writing an order, but could only receive them through
the window.
The agreement provided for every detail and every trifle that
would make his imprisonment strictly solitary, and bound the young man to stay
there _exactly_ fifteen years, beginning from twelve o'clock of November 14,
1870, and ending at twelve o'clock of November 14, 1885. The slightest attempt
on his part to break the conditions, if only two minutes before the end,
released the banker from the obligation to pay him two millions.
For the first year of his confinement, as far as one could judge
from his brief notes, the prisoner suffered severely from loneliness and
depression. The sounds of the piano could be heard continually day and night
from his lodge.
He refused wine and tobacco. Wine, he wrote, excites the
desires, and desires are the worst foes of the prisoner; and besides, nothing
could be more dreary than drinking good wine and seeing no one. And tobacco spoilt the air of his room.
In the first year the books he sent for were principally of a
light character; novels with a complicated love plot, sensational and fantastic
stories, and so on.
In the second year the piano was silent in the lodge, and the
prisoner asked only for the classics.
In the fifth year music was audible again, and the prisoner
asked for wine. Those who watched him through the window said that all that
year he spent doing nothing but eating and drinking and lying on his bed,
frequently yawning and angrily talking to himself.
He did not read books. Sometimes at night he would sit down to
write; he would spend hours writing, and in the morning tear up all that he had
written. More than once he could be heard crying.
In the second half of the sixth year the prisoner began
zealously studying languages, philosophy, and history. He threw himself eagerly
into these studies -- so much so that the banker had enough to do to get him
the books he ordered.
In the course of four years some six hundred volumes were
procured at his request. It was during this period that the banker received the
following letter from his prisoner:
"My dear Jailer, I write you these lines in six languages.
Show them to people who know the languages. Let them read them. If they find
not one mistake I implore you to fire a shot in the garden. That shot will show
me that my efforts have not been thrown away.
The geniuses of all ages and of all lands speak different
languages, but the same flame burns in them all. Oh, if you only knew what
unearthly happiness my soul feels now from being able to understand them!"
The prisoner's desire was fulfilled. The banker ordered two
shots to be fired in the garden.
Then after the tenth year, the prisoner sat immovably at the
table and read nothing but the Gospel. It seemed strange to the banker that a
man who in four years had mastered six hundred learned volumes should waste
nearly a year over one thin book easy of comprehension. Theology and histories
of religion followed the Gospels.
In the last two years of his confinement the prisoner read an
immense quantity of books quite indiscriminately. At one time he was busy with
the natural sciences, then he would ask for Byron or Shakespeare.
There were notes in which he demanded at the same time books on
chemistry, and a manual of medicine, and a novel, and some treatise on philosophy or theology. His reading suggested a
man swimming in the sea among the wreckage of his ship, and trying to save his
life by greedily clutching first at one spar and then at another.
***
Will he make it? The experience is changing him in significant ways. Come back tomorrow and find out how...
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